The dhow had been sold to pay his court fine, and was now owned by a Punjabi who had bought it as a speculation and repented already of his bargain, because the Germans would grant him no license to use it and nobody else would buy.
They went off again to have another distant view of it and to try and invent some means of inspecting it closely without betraying their purpose.

I was already able to walk with the aid of a stick, although not fast enough to keep up with them, and curiosity taking hold of me I called two of our servants to give me a supporting arm and limped off to see the grave the chain-gang had recently dug for me.
It was a struggle to get there, but it seemed to me the trip was worth it.

I found the grave about a foot too short, but otherwise commensurate, and sat down on a stone beside it to consider a number of things.

A convalescent man sitting beside his own grave may be forgiven for amusing himself with a lot of near-philosophy, and if I trespassed over the borders of common sense on that occasion I claim it was not without excuse.
My meditations were disturbed by the arrival on the scene of the very last man I expected.

We had been told that Professor Schillingschen had gone out on a journey, leaving his "wife" in the care of the commandant; yet I looked up suddenly to see him standing on the other side of the grave with both hands in the pockets of his knickerbockers and a grin of malevolent amusement showing through the tangled mass of hair that hid his lower face.
"Yours ?" he asked.
I nodded.
"A close call! I have seen closer! I have stood so close to the brink of death that the width of an eyelash would have damned me!" "Piffle!" I answered rudely.